Would Luke be called a Mary Sue if Episode 6 came out today?

Before anyone says anything, I like all the Star Wars movies. I even have soft spots for parts of the prequel movies. So this isn't an attack on the movies or my man Luke (especially not green lightsaber Luke).

It's just been something that I've wondered for a while now, as we are a lot more picky and strict about power levels and why characters can do the things that they can than we used to be. And so I wondered if it applied to a classic like Star Wars, specifically Return of the Jedi.

Luke got a major increase in abilities between movies, as the entire Jabba section of the movie shows off well. He's pulling off mind tricks, force chokes, strategic planning, and is much better with a lightsaber than he was during his ill-fated duel with Darth Vader.

But as far as I've been able to find out, Luke never had any more training with Yoda after what we saw in Empire. He wasn't spending the time between movies training with his master but trying to save Han (understandable). So from just a few days worth of training where he was barely able to lift rocks, he was able to become a near full-fledged Jedi knight in a relatively short amount of time.

I don't mind this, because I still really liked Luke, his upgraded abilities let him do more, and while he might have been able to eventually overpower Vader, he still had those in the movie much stronger than him, such as the Emperor. But I am curious what everyone else thinks. Would Luke be called a Mary/Gary Sue if Return of the Jedi was a movie that came out in today's world?

No, because he had to go through training before he could beat Vader, and lift a lot of rocks. And he had 4 years between A New Hope and Return of the Jedi. Rey was a desert scavenger one day, and literally beating Kylo at the end of it. Then a couple days after that she lifts huge rocks.

I don't know. I do know that I don't buy that Rey is a "Mary Sue" because she was very powerful without training that much. The way I interpret it, the force can make anyone as powerful as it wants. Its not like Rey is perfect or anything.

Wasn't Kylo severely injured by Chewbacca's blaster right before the fight? And wasn't it outright stated in The Last Jedi that Kylo's conflicted feelings and nature over killing his father left him in a very compromised and weakened state? I'm just saying that I don't think that's really as big a feat as people make it out to be.

Shhh let people hate on the new Disney Trilogy before it is finished.

Luke and a large amount of chosen one characters are Mary Sue's

its not like he did a jedi mind trick with zero training, he actually had to go through years of hard work before he could do jedi stuff

The original trilogy covers 4 years. Luke was a nerdy, whiny dork at the start of the trilogy, he had one great talent and it was as a pilot. It took two whole films before he became a straight badass. Rey's too good from the jump, she can fight, she's a great pilot, she can speak Shyriwook, she fixes up the Falcon better than Han Solo, she can do mind tricks, she can force pull the lightsaber against Kylo Ren's power, flip Kylo's attempt to read her thoughts back on him etc.

@rogueshadow: Which all happened in TFA

I don't think so. The man was a bum in a New Hope. Got wrecked (loss him hand) in Empire Strikes Back. Then, he finally won in Return of The Jedi only to get "UNLIMITED POWAHH" by Darth Sidious. Throughout the film, he needs help and has some form of training. Luke Skywalker's story is the embodiment of the hero's journey.

I don't get your point.

@jasonhawke: Even though injuried an conflicted, he shouldn't lose to a noob. Seriously. If Luke saw him as such a threat...

@rogueshadow: What did she do that made her a Mary sue in TLJ

@kgb725: Contend with Luke, stalemate Kylo Ren, lift huge boulders with barely even knowing what the force was.

@jasonhawke: Disney trilogy sucks. Anyway, with what has been given, we can hate on. I don't consider Disney canon. Idc if it's opinion or blah. Legends is legit.

I didn't say she was. That said, this film did little to remedy it, her overall progress is still far too rapid in general, Kylo's been doing this shit for years, she's been going for a week and a half if that, yet she's lifting a bunch of rocks, taking out several elite Praetorian guards at a time, stalemating Kylo in the Force etc. At least she got served up by Snoke in this film though.

@emperor_jar_jar: The same Luke who didn't fight or use the force in at least a decade? Skills detoriate. They stalemated off of their force abilities which we've seen happen before with Anakin and Obi Wan and Anakin was clearly much more gifted with the force than Obi Wan. Nothing wrong with her lifting rocks

Luke's only Mary Sue moment was the torpedo going through the vent hole thingy he didn't do anything really in A New Hope didn't have any force powers or anything Rey used the force, used Jedi mind trick without even knowing what it was, beat Kylo Ren a guy who has had years of force and light sabre training, she also was an ace pilot somehow knew how to disarm starkiller base etc whatever the plot needed her to do she could do it without any explanation at all

Luke was only an ace pilot and killed some stormtroppers who everyone was beating

Even in ESB and ROTJ be had training, an ass kicking from Vader, plus he had reasoning because his dad was strong with the force that was do to midichrions or whatever Rey is nobody but can somehow do everything

This.

I want to like Rey, and I definitely don't dislike her character. But she's had no real traceable growth so far, and already knows skills without any explanation as to how she knows them

I knew it! I knew it! The moment that moment happened in the film I knew there'd be people overreacting to it just like they did when Batman managed to hit Reverse Flash maybe three times in a fight he otherwise got destroyed in.

Luke and Rey barely fought and when they were Luke was clearly the one with the upper hand throughout most of it. When she grabbed the lightsaber he fell down but only because he didn't want to get cut and that's also when they stopped fighting anyway.

As for the boulders, she had been getting taught by Luke about the force and what it REALLY is, not what she thought of it before and not just how the Jedi and Sith use it. She's nowhere near Luke and Kylo's level of understanding yet but she does have an understanding thanks to what Luke made her feel out on the island.

Amazing how someone can be knocked around and toyed with through the majority of a movie and still be called a Mary Sue.

Not really. Luke was a whiny know-it-all and the only character that even liked him at first was Obi-Wan. Han and Leia treated Luke like crap for the first half of the movie, and rightly so. He wouldn't have even been able to destroy the Death Star if it hadn't been for Han coming back and saving him.

He doesn't become a fighter until he undergoes legit training under Yoda, who didn't even want to train him at first, and even then he's brash and impulsive and ends up ignoring Yoda's wisdom in favor of fighting Vader, which results in getting his hand cut off. He completely fails and needs to be rescued by Leia.

And then in the final movie he finally overcomes Vader, only to be completely overwhelmed by Sidious without even managing to put up a fight. Vader has to save him, meanwhile Han and Leia make the destruction of the second Death Star possible, saving the day.

Luke struggles every step of the way on his hero's journey and needs his supporting cast to save him constantly throughout the trilogy. He doesn't even end up being especially powerful as at the very end he is still no match for the Emperor.

@aros001: She also fought him to a stand still in that movie, so.....

@rogueshadow: Lifting rocks is not some huge feat in SW. You can be far weaker than someone and still stalemate them in the force and we know nothing about the guard

To be fair, I can't remember a time in TFA or TLJ where she's definitively lost a lightsaber fight.

In ESB, Luke lost his fight with Vader. He was completely outmatched, even with more training than Rey had received. Meanwhile Rey has beaten Kylo Ren once and stalemated him once, so either Rey is astoundingly good or Kylo Ren is astoundingly bad

Luke had a teacher, he had training, and the reason why he was powerful in the force made sense. Even after all this he still was no match for Palpatine. Rey seems to have everything handed to her on a silver plate: her lightsaber skills, way with the force, and she is powerful for still no clear reason.

Go back and check out the size and amount of those rocks. That was a lot for somebody who started using the Force a week ago - too much. Luke had to focus intensely just to pull his saber out of the snow from a couple of feet away.

You shouldn't be able to learn about the Force and then a week later equal a guy who's been using it/training for decades.

We know they were good enough to press and nearly defeat Kylo Ren, who is the Master of the Knights of Ren and again, has been training for years and years. Yet Rey is the one who saves his ass in the end.

@tomkatie: I dislike Rey because she has the same background as Luke that's why Episode 7 ruined Star Wars. I made a thread about it. https://comicvine.gamespot.com/forums/gen-discussion-1/this-is-why-both-star-wars-episode-7-and-8-ruin-st-1917886/?page=1

Being injured and emotionally devastated are pretty valid reasons to lose to a noob.

Luke saw him as a huge "potential" threat

@jasonhawke: Anakin killed younglings, Jedi, and he was also emotionally conflicted. He was still beating Obi Wan, the greatest Soresu master.

Luke clearly isn’t a Mary Sue though. He’s made a large amount of mistakes through out the movies. He proved to be impatient and reckless in his training. He left early from his training to fight Darth Vader, only to fail horribly. He failed to create a new Jedi order, and left himself in exile. That doesn’t really seem like a Mary Sue.

Being fair, he had just been mauled by a Wampa and hung upside down for an unknown length of time unconscious, focus wouldn't be too there at that point.

He had at least some training and understanding with The Force thanks to Kenobi, it wasn't just there for him.

That's the point.

Kylo ISN'T Vader/Anakin

Boy, you can't even compare Anakin and Kylo. TLJ even made this a point when Snoke mocked Kylo about him trying be Vader.

Anakin went full on Dark Side. You could see it in his eyes. Anakin was also an extremely powerful in the force and they made that a point in "Obi-Wan is more experienced but Anakin is more powerful"

Kylo didn't even get that look in his eyes even after he was whining and crying about trying to "become Vader" to Han Solo right before he stabbed him.

@jasonhawke: I suppose that's why Anakin was crying because of his deeds before Padme found him.

It's not even comparable (Just the passage, fk the rest of the video)

As I've said, Kylo and Anakin aren't comparable and that was even a point in the TLJ. Rey would put up more of a fight than younglings and Anakin is far more powerful than Kylo.

@wolfrazer: that's kind of what I'm saying plus he was kind of oblivious and wasn't fully aware of himself I mean Rey knew how to fix and fly the millennium falcon better than Han or Chewy when she hadn't even flown before at least Luke had prior flight experience and training I remember him saying he was the best on some kind of flight trainer/simulator plus Rey Jedi mind tricked a trooper with our witnessing it or knowing you even could do that

No, because he spent two movies working for what he had so it felt deserved.

I cosign all this as well.

People tend to forget that a major baseline of a Mary Sue is that they are inserted into an already established lore. That's the key difference between Luke and Rey.

Lol y’all worries about Rey lifting rocks, but not leia force pulling herself back to the ship after surviving an explosion and the vacuum of space...

Plenty of people hate that too.

Except Luke didn't train her. He flat out refused to in fact. He asked her what she thought the Force was, then corrected her when she answered wrong, then he had her meditate, then freaked out when she immediately got attracted to the largest source of Dark Side power on the island. That was the entirety of her 'training' with Luke. Absolutely nothing.

Her fighting skills aren't why a lot of people are calling her a Mary Sue, it's her absurdly rapid and unexplained accumulation of power with the Force that's making everyone upset. She's been around for all of 2 weeks and she's doing things that Jedi Masters would struggle with. In fact, she's the only character in the franchises history that has power growth like that. That's why people are calling her a Mary Sue.

@aros001:

She reminds me of Savage Oppress in some ways, powerful in the force but sloppy. The only difference is Savage took months to be ok with the force and had Dooku, one of the wisest Jedi Masters, to teach him. But before that Savage was no one but a boy. If the movies had said TLJ takes place 1-3 year after TFA then we'd ignore her bull power boosts.

Luke isn't a Mary Sue because the universe was made for him, and he lost a lot and has to lick his wounds a lot.

@paragonnate: He still taught her multiple things even if that was where the training ended. She's also got plenty of help from the books

@kgb725: Incorrect. He taught her literally nothing other than the fact that her preconceived ideas about the Force were wrong. You mean the books that she never had time to read?

@kgb725: He taught her how to feel the force. That was it. It still took Luke 4 years till he became a badass.

he didn't even teach her how to feel the force, he just told her to feel it and she did it in a way that scared luke

@paragonnate: I'm sure Episode 9, she'll read the books and suddenly be super power!

@paragonnate: Not what happened.

She'll even surpass SuperLeia!

Um, yeah, it is.

She meditated, freaked Luke out, he told her to gtfo. That's exactly what happened. Later they had a kind of bonding moment when she held a lightsaber to his throat and he told her what really happened with Ben, but he never instructed her in any way shape or from after that.